Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to location-based services using geofences, and more particularly to context-based geofence control methods for reducing power consumption.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, Location-Based Services (LBS) involving “geofences” have dramatically increased in popularity, along with the rapid development of positioning technologies. Generally, a geofence refers to a virtual perimeter of a real-world geographic area for use with an LBS, and certain processes or actions associated with the LBS may be triggered for a tracked mobile device when the location information of the tracked mobile device strongly correlates to such an area. For example, a geofence may be defined as a radius around a Point of Interest (POI) or Region of Interest (ROI), and the tracked mobile device may evaluate whether it is inside or outside the geofence based on its current location. In most practices, it is required for the tracked mobile device to always turn on the positioning module(s) therein, so as to acquire updates of the location information in real time for supporting the geofence evaluation. However, always keeping the positioning module(s) on is very power consuming and inevitably results in short battery life. Thus, it is desirable to have a more energy-efficient method for geofence controls.